Glad to see wizards paying attention to us modern players.
But I am skeptic as to which direction they are going into. Let's think for a sec, if they introduce such a booster set, it needs to differ from modern masters, which is modern legal reprints only. So there are two kind of cards it needs to introduce, in addition to modern legal reprints, those are 1. non-modern legal reprints, and 2. newly designed modern specific cards. If neither of those cards printed are more powerful than the current modern available card pool, the product simply won't move. However, if they start introducing increasingly powerful cards through modern legal booster sets that effectively power creep modern, it'll turn modern into a non-rotating standard, which is very very dangerous.
If they go the route of creating modern only booster pack products I'm not sure what that will mean for modern in other respects, or if it will even be the same format the players envisioned. The thing is, with commander it is a casual format, so as long as all the cards fit into the design space and limitations they put on power for each point of the curve it can go in the set. That's why commander always seems to get really insanely powerful cards that often feed into infinite combo engines or do crazy things like blink your entire board out of existence. Modern can never be on such a loose leash.
If wizards starts making a modern specific product that implies much more scrutiny than they currently employ. I do think it would help a lot on accessibility, though. It took me close to four years to finally scrounge up enough money to afford an abzan fetchland mana-base and the inescapable fact of modern is that that people are limited by the bread and butter of the format as far as cost. Wizards made a horrible mistake making Noble Heirarch, Snapcaster Mage, Cavern of Souls, and other boring, but necessary cards mythic. They did it because it made stores confident in the boxes selling, but that confidence came from the wrong kinds of player needs and motivations.
I'm afraid accessibility isn't fully in WOTC's hands, and maybe not even in their interest. Their target is to make profit, profit comes from revenue which is always a function of price and quantity. It's not always the best for WOTC to increase accessibility, aka quantity. They printed noble heirarch and snapcaster on mythic not because of flavor, but because of secondary market interests. In fact, introducing mythic rarity basically meant that they sided with secondary market players, such as SCG, CFB and other big card stores. In economics, that's text book price discrimination, and as a for profit company, they should by all means do so. By siding with the secondary players though, WOTC relinquishes control of the secondary market price to an extend, in exchange of liquidity, or volume. That's what made the game prosperous for the players, and lucrative for WOTC. TBH it worked, at least on the financial statements. But short term monetary gain could come at a long term cost, i.e. their printing quality sucked for the past few years, their questionable arrangements of product line also kinda hurted.
Following that logic, even if they introduce a modern specific booster product, what they really wanted to do is to milk cash out of modern players' pockets, which is perfectly reasonable. What's WOTC's most lucrative product line? Booster boxes, always. Everyone knows that the best way to sell packs is through limited, but the dilemma is that constructed has been the primary selling point of MTG for at least the first 20 years (correct me if I'm wrong), and will continue to remain that way. Out of all constructed formats, which one is the most lucrative? Standard, because cards become obsolete every 2 years. Non rotating formats are nice to keep players happy with the game, but what happens when more and more players start sitting on their "modern staple" cards and don't buy booster packs? What's the best way to get these modern players to buy packs? If you ask me, I'd say shake up the format, make it "rotate" through power level shifts. from Jund to Twin to Pod to Scapeshift to Tron etc. If these metagame shifts are due to new prints, the new boosters will be highly sought after, just imagine modern specific booster set #1 prints baleful strixengineered plaguecounterspell, boosting the power lvl of UB color combination. Then set #2 prints swords to plowsharesastral slide etc. intentionally shifting power lvls across different colors/archetypes and increasing the power level of modern. Eventually one day you'll be sitting there with a bunch of tarmogoyfsdark confidant worth $20, because the new prints are so powerful that these don't even see play anymore, and you'll have to keep buy new booster packs to keep up.
Glad to see wizards paying attention to us modern players.
But I am skeptic as to which direction they are going into. Let's think for a sec, if they introduce such a booster set, it needs to differ from modern masters, which is modern legal reprints only. So there are two kind of cards it needs to introduce, in addition to modern legal reprints, those are 1. non-modern legal reprints, and 2. newly designed modern specific cards. If neither of those cards printed are more powerful than the current modern available card pool, the product simply won't move. However, if they start introducing increasingly powerful cards through modern legal booster sets that effectively power creep modern, it'll turn modern into a non-rotating standard, which is very very dangerous.
OK guys so, I bought my scalding tarns. Sweet mother, my wallet. I'm gonna be eating grass for a couple weeks.
More importantly though, I've been running my list against my playgroup and it hasn't been beat yet. So far its taken out 2 UW decks (one traditional with Gideon Jura, the other more up-to-date with Teferi, like Nassif's list), Jeskai control, Grixis Shadow.
The fountains of renewal should be something else for Burn match ups, I haven't figured out what I wanna do other than collective brutality. Wish we had something awesome like scavenging ooze. Maybe I'll run Kalitas.
Thoughts on the deck: I've mostly been up against other draw go decks, and I've won quite a few by simply dropping a turn 2 Pyromancer on the play and then winning with it. When it comes to grinding though, man having logic knot instead of leaks is awesome. Gifts is totally a death sentence for the control opponent - snap, young p, claim, kolaghans with an already stocked yard just seals the deal. Once, I didn't have a counterspell in hand for a Teferi on the stack but the oppo was tapped out to cast him, so I went with gifts for snap/claim/dreadbore/jvp. That teferi was a dead duck.
grats on your tarns
for burn, dragon's claw might do the trick if that's along the lines of what you r looking for
@rbi i'm not trying to dismiss your idea of notion thief, but i honestly believe that notion thief is overcosted. you could certainly test it.
i think thing in the ice is worth testing, i'll try 2 copies of it main in pyromancer's place. keep in mind that flipping thing functions as a board wipe.
From 8th edition onwards: R/G destroy artifacts. W/G destroy enchantments.
Disagree. White has been getting artifact removal since 8th, white has had plenty artifact removal since 8th.
Decommission, Disenchant, Divine Offering, Fragmentize, Invoke the Divine, Solemn Offering, and Terashi's Grasp are all modern legal artifact removal. Not only that but you can see how some are improvements on past versions of themselves. WotC has been actively scaling up white's ability to remove artifacts; not as a major piece of their color identity, but as a distant side show.
Saying white has no additional artifact removal since 8th/time spiral is flat wrong. Bring up cards like Engineered Explosives is almost laughable because of how the card interacts with Blood Moon itself. How do you get 3 colors of mana when you're only allowed Mountains?
I'm not trying to call out Blood Moon as some rampant force in Modern, but it's a card that hoses your opponent to such a high degree and then protects itself while being the most difficult permanent type to remove. In addition to that, it can easily be rushed into play by more than a few of the decks that like to run it. Literally no other card in the format is so devastating on its own.
Counter argument is that Blood Moon punishes greedy mana bases. That's pretty true, but punish and create non-games are hugely different in my opinion. I know if I'm on Grixis and my opponent gets Moon down, I might as well not waste my time. The pile of 10ish cards I can still play will not win me the game vs their 60 card deck.
I'll repeat what I said in the other thread: "If mountains could destroy enchantments Blood Moon would be fine by me." Highlight that I am talking about Blood Moon and not the lack of enchant hate. I would also accept if Blood Moon made everything into Forests; at least then it activates a chance that you have an out instead of being laughed at and told to Sunburst 3 to remove it or wait to have a huge amount of mana.
Edit2: If another color were given the ability to destroy enchantments I think this would be a non-issue. It's not my first choice as a fix, but I think it works. You'll notice that of all the white removal only 2 or 3 of those options require WW in the cost with most being just W, this shows that white artifact removal is no stretch for the color, otherwise we'd see some hefty white costs. If similar were given to Blue or Black for a single color cost, then I think this would also solve my issue with Moon.
100x this. Can't be better said. If you think about it, creatures are the easiest to remove, every color has creature removal to some extend. Blue never had straight creature removal, only variants like rapid hybridization, green never had that either, only creature fights another creature or destroy target flying creature. Then planeswalkers are arguably the second easiest to remove, since you can destroy it via creature attacking, direct damange, or destroy/exile effects. artifact hate exists in R/G/W, so that's not problematic at all. Enchantment, like artifact, can only be removed through direct spells, and bouncing them don't do much.
@wraith, Blue is never getting enchantment removal, neither is black, or blue.
The closer one can get is to ask for a better Perilous Voyage, but that's that. U is only getting bounce cards. Alternatively, one can play colourless cards like Engineered Explosives or destroy all permanent effects like Apocalypse(which is not Modern legal I believe-and find cards like this one).
You can ask Maro, and he will almost surely give you this exact answer.
I think I remember someone, might have been Maro, saying that red can't destroy enchantments because the color is too dumb, basically. They can smash artifacts and fling fireballs, but they don't know what to do with a persistent magical spell like an enchantment. I know that blue usually only gets bounce spells, but from a flavor perspective, if enchantments are supposed to be persistent spells, doesn't it make sense that blue should be able to undo them? I think it makes sense, and I really think enchantment destruction needs to be opened up to a third color anyway.
I am confused. Artifact destruction is in R, G. Enchantments destruction is in G,W.
2 for both. Seems fair. Nothing is going to change in that department. Disenchant is a colour shifted time spiral card, don't forget.
Wait, you do realize he’s a +5 against Jace and faithless looting, right?
yeah but he's only going to be online later than turn 4, and he costs 4, which means against faithless looting, he's too slow. against jace, there are certainly better options, for 4 cmc you are looking at a cryptic command.
inspiring to see Corey Buckhart still running Grixis Control in the PT, does anyone know what his record was like?
and what are your thoughts on our MU vs BridgeVine?
more importantly, is his decklist posted somewhere?
bridgevine is extremely hard unless we draw 1) turn 0/turn 1 graveyard hate (surgical, leyline, spellbomb) or Anger of the Gods turn 3. especially on the draw, the matchup straight up sucks.
turn 1 targeted discard on the play can also hamper their explosiveness quite a bit if you can keep them from dumping bridge in their grave (i.e. always go for the enabler)
in response to bridgevine, if nothing happens on Aug 16 B&R update, which i believe nothing will, im just gonna pack a full set of leyline of the void. Maybe i should also replace Duress with thoughtseize/IoK for my SB. the game will very lopsided nonetheless, solely dependent on whether we draw leyline or not, and we're most likely to lose G1.
How do you guys feel about Notion Thief? At 4 CMC, its a big investment, but flashing in a notion thief in response to a Jace or a faithless looting sounds like just about the best thing you can do with this deck.
Notion thief at 4 CMC is simply overcosted for what he does. if he's a 2 cmc 1/1 or 2/1 he could find a place in our SB.
Looking forward to Ravnica for sure. As you say, those multicolour sets generally give us some great stuff.
heres to hoping for some cheap/powerful multicolored humans, cause what could go wrong.
lol
yeah like how I remembered in the last ravnica themed set, dimir guild brought us cheap MILL powerful MILL and multicolored MILL
We are pretty close to a Modern Mill deck at this point. It wouldnt take much to push it over the edge into viable I think.
gl with that... I would simply just wish for some real control cards in the UB colors, but knowing WOTC and their "dimir" guild setting, it's gonna be mill, period
if we look at the top 4 decklists, it's interesting that legacy top 4 are all aggro decks, modern has 3 aggro decks in the top 4, the only exception being a combo. and if we look closely, 2 DNT for legacy and 2 humans for modern were primarily "spells stapled to a body" type of decks, and the #1 played card across all 3 formats out of 12 decks is aether vial. it certainly says something.
Eldrazi was the only aggro deck in the Legacy Top 4. Death & Taxes is prison, and the Death's Shadow list is tempo (or possibly midrange, but either way it isn't aggro).
right, DNT is more precisely described as a control deck in legacy, but it certainly leverages its aggro element, by clocking your opponent with creatures while locking them down. and when we say "tempo", what we are really saying is aggro control isn't it? certainly there's a heavy aggro element and disruption element blended in, which is exactly what i'm trying to point out, "spell stapled to a body" type of decks are thriving, maybe a little pushed.
I'm afraid accessibility isn't fully in WOTC's hands, and maybe not even in their interest. Their target is to make profit, profit comes from revenue which is always a function of price and quantity. It's not always the best for WOTC to increase accessibility, aka quantity. They printed noble heirarch and snapcaster on mythic not because of flavor, but because of secondary market interests. In fact, introducing mythic rarity basically meant that they sided with secondary market players, such as SCG, CFB and other big card stores. In economics, that's text book price discrimination, and as a for profit company, they should by all means do so. By siding with the secondary players though, WOTC relinquishes control of the secondary market price to an extend, in exchange of liquidity, or volume. That's what made the game prosperous for the players, and lucrative for WOTC. TBH it worked, at least on the financial statements. But short term monetary gain could come at a long term cost, i.e. their printing quality sucked for the past few years, their questionable arrangements of product line also kinda hurted.
Following that logic, even if they introduce a modern specific booster product, what they really wanted to do is to milk cash out of modern players' pockets, which is perfectly reasonable. What's WOTC's most lucrative product line? Booster boxes, always. Everyone knows that the best way to sell packs is through limited, but the dilemma is that constructed has been the primary selling point of MTG for at least the first 20 years (correct me if I'm wrong), and will continue to remain that way. Out of all constructed formats, which one is the most lucrative? Standard, because cards become obsolete every 2 years. Non rotating formats are nice to keep players happy with the game, but what happens when more and more players start sitting on their "modern staple" cards and don't buy booster packs? What's the best way to get these modern players to buy packs? If you ask me, I'd say shake up the format, make it "rotate" through power level shifts. from Jund to Twin to Pod to Scapeshift to Tron etc. If these metagame shifts are due to new prints, the new boosters will be highly sought after, just imagine modern specific booster set #1 prints baleful strix engineered plague counterspell, boosting the power lvl of UB color combination. Then set #2 prints swords to plowshares astral slide etc. intentionally shifting power lvls across different colors/archetypes and increasing the power level of modern. Eventually one day you'll be sitting there with a bunch of tarmogoyfs dark confidant worth $20, because the new prints are so powerful that these don't even see play anymore, and you'll have to keep buy new booster packs to keep up.
But I am skeptic as to which direction they are going into. Let's think for a sec, if they introduce such a booster set, it needs to differ from modern masters, which is modern legal reprints only. So there are two kind of cards it needs to introduce, in addition to modern legal reprints, those are 1. non-modern legal reprints, and 2. newly designed modern specific cards. If neither of those cards printed are more powerful than the current modern available card pool, the product simply won't move. However, if they start introducing increasingly powerful cards through modern legal booster sets that effectively power creep modern, it'll turn modern into a non-rotating standard, which is very very dangerous.
grats on your tarns
for burn, dragon's claw might do the trick if that's along the lines of what you r looking for
i think thing in the ice is worth testing, i'll try 2 copies of it main in pyromancer's place. keep in mind that flipping thing functions as a board wipe.
100x this. Can't be better said. If you think about it, creatures are the easiest to remove, every color has creature removal to some extend. Blue never had straight creature removal, only variants like rapid hybridization, green never had that either, only creature fights another creature or destroy target flying creature. Then planeswalkers are arguably the second easiest to remove, since you can destroy it via creature attacking, direct damange, or destroy/exile effects. artifact hate exists in R/G/W, so that's not problematic at all. Enchantment, like artifact, can only be removed through direct spells, and bouncing them don't do much.
disenchanthas been there since alpha....
SCG Modern IQ Oklahoma City, 3rd Place
pretty neat list, packing 2 thing in the ice and 1 mainboard Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
yeah but he's only going to be online later than turn 4, and he costs 4, which means against faithless looting, he's too slow. against jace, there are certainly better options, for 4 cmc you are looking at a cryptic command.
his list is still pretty standard: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1254275#online
in response to bridgevine, if nothing happens on Aug 16 B&R update, which i believe nothing will, im just gonna pack a full set of leyline of the void. Maybe i should also replace Duress with thoughtseize/IoK for my SB. the game will very lopsided nonetheless, solely dependent on whether we draw leyline or not, and we're most likely to lose G1.
Notion thief at 4 CMC is simply overcosted for what he does. if he's a 2 cmc 1/1 or 2/1 he could find a place in our SB.
and what are your thoughts on our MU vs BridgeVine?
gl with that... I would simply just wish for some real control cards in the UB colors, but knowing WOTC and their "dimir" guild setting, it's gonna be mill, period
yeah like how I remembered in the last ravnica themed set, dimir guild brought us cheap MILL powerful MILL and multicolored MILL
feel sorry for goyf, from format staple to barely played...
right, DNT is more precisely described as a control deck in legacy, but it certainly leverages its aggro element, by clocking your opponent with creatures while locking them down. and when we say "tempo", what we are really saying is aggro control isn't it? certainly there's a heavy aggro element and disruption element blended in, which is exactly what i'm trying to point out, "spell stapled to a body" type of decks are thriving, maybe a little pushed.